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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25149079">Five-Pointed Star</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/whiternights/pseuds/whiternights'>whiternights</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>NU'EST</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Canon Divergence, Friendship, Future Fic, Gen, Minor Sci-Fi Elements, Near Future, Nu'est ot5</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-07-08</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-07-08</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-05 03:14:10</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>610</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25149079</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/whiternights/pseuds/whiternights</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p><em>It can’t be helped, they think. A decade has passed, and things have inevitably changed. They’ve grown up- and grown out of each other. That’s just the way life is.</em> </p><p>or: nu'est is waiting for their contract to end so they can finally go their separate ways. (they get what they want, just not in the way they expected.)</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>NU'EST OT5 - Relationship</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>4</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>6</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Five-Pointed Star</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>NU'EST's career has always felt like a slow and steady crawl: a slow and steady crawl for survival, a slow and steady crawl towards success, a slow and steady crawl to the dreaded seven-year mark. This time, they're on their slow and steady crawl to the finish line.</p><p>Ah. If only it were as noble as it sounds.</p><p>It can’t be helped, they think. A decade has passed, and things have inevitably changed. They’ve grown up- and grown out of each other. That’s just the way life is.</p><p>There’s no laughter in the waiting rooms, no conversations between filmings. Every day is just another day of going through the motions, of smiling for the fans then keeping to themselves when the flashes stop and the fanfare subsides. Some days, they don’t even say a word to each other once the cameras stop rolling.</p><p>It’s not a feeling of animosity that changed the way things are between them, though. Having emotions like that would imply that they still care, and they simply don't. Not anymore.</p><p>Of course, there had been many fights and disagreements over the years, but the fire within them had already burned out a long time ago. There's not enough passion left to fuel the naive conviction they used to have that every argument would eventually be settled, every problem, resolved. Instead, there’s only a profound exhaustion- a chronic numbness that had slowly but persistently settled deep within their bones, taking the place of the sentiments that had, once upon a time, kept the team of five afloat when the world was determined to bring them down.</p><p>They never explicitly discuss it, but all of them have, on more than one occasion, regretted renewing their contracts. If they had known back then that everything was going to go downhill from that point, then they probably would have chosen to end their journey earlier, when they still had bits and pieces of their bond intact. Maybe then they wouldn’t feel this empty and cold.</p><p>But what's done is done, and to avoid causing inconvenience to the people they work with, there’s a mutual understanding that they will keep going until they reach the fulfillment of the legal obligation that's keeping them bound together. There isn’t much time left anyway. They just need to continue what they’ve always done as five, albeit without the feelings they used to have.</p><p>At least that was the plan.</p><p>It's almost funny how long it takes them to realize that things are not quite right, the day it happens. In fact, it's already nighttime when Jonghyun offhandedly asks their manager if Mingi will be around for the following afternoon's video interview as the latter has been absent without notice the whole day. None of them are actually interested in knowing the answer to the question; it's just one of those things the leader has to confirm in order to prepare for their schedules accordingly. But when their manager asks who Mingi is and why he needs to be at the interview, it finally dawns on them that there's something terribly amiss about the situation.</p><p>It's on the very disconcerting car ride back to the company that they manage to put the pieces together and come to an unsettling realization: their youngest has disappeared- and not just physically. His existence, in the memories and in the lives of everyone else other than the members, has vanished completely. No one knows NU'EST’s Ren nor the person that was Choi Minki. NU'EST is, and has always been, JR, Aron, Baekho, and Minhyun. What was supposed to be five has become four.</p><p>NU'EST, as five, simply never happened.</p><p> </p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>i tweet things sometimes: <a href="https://twitter.com/whiternights">@whiternights</a></p></blockquote></div></div>
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